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Hooray Nintendo! A new MarioKart has arrived and this time it’s for the Nintendo DS.

MarioKart made it’s debute on the Super Nintendo and got me hooked ever since. It’s one of the most amusing race games ever, both in single and multiplayer. This time, Nintendo brings something that every MarioKart player will enjoy, that’s right, MarioKart DS is playable over the internet!

Story:

Like in every MarioKart, the game doesn’t really have a story. You have to try to finish first on every course and be the best to unlock the golden trophies. After a while you are able to unlock secret things like new karts, new players, new tracks etc… (because the game doesn’t really have a story, I’ll exclude it from the pointcount).Gameplay (9/10):

Like mentioned before, you’ve got to try to finish first at every course in MarioKart DS. You can race in Grand Prix in 50cc (easy), 100cc (intermediate) and 150cc (hard) and you race against familiar characters from the Mario universe in 4 levels per Cup. After racing in the 4 courses you will be awarded bronze, silver or gold, depending on what your ranking is(you will also get a rating, 3 stars is very good and E is the worst you can get). If you didn’t make it as one of the first 3 then you don’t get anything. So practice until you get to the top!

Items play a great roll in the game because without them, the game would be pretty dull wouldn’t it? You have the traditional items like the mushrooms which boosts your speed up, the red and green shells which knocks over enemies and the star which makes you temporarily invincible. Some new items are the squid which throws black ink on your screen or the bullet that knocks over a couple of enemies and puts you more up in front of the ranking.

Next to the Grand Prix there are the Time Trials, VS, Battle and Missions.

- Time Trials: In Time Trials you have to race against the clock. There aren’t any other characters on the course; It’s just you, a mushroom and the effort to get the fastest time as possible. After racing a course one time, you can race against your own ghost (your previous racing gets registered and you can try to beat it) or a ghost from the Nintendo staff.

- VS: In VS you can choose any track from the list and play against the cpu with 8 players in total.

- Battle: In Battle you can either play Balloon Battle(every player drives with a balloon and you have to destroy the other players balloons) or Shine Runners (collect as many Shines as you can).

- Missions: In Missions you have to complete a wide range of missions. From finishing first in a course to driving backwards through the gates in time.

What makes MarioKart DS so special is the fact that it has 32 different courses! While it has 16 new tracks, it also has 16 retro tracks. There are 4 levels from the Super Nintendo, 4 from the Nintendo64, 4 from the Gameboy Advance and 4 from the Nintendo Gamecube MarioKart. All the tracks are playable in the 50cc, 100cc, 150cc and the 150cc Mirror Mode.

Now the part a lot of people want to know about, the Nintendo Wifi connection! After you configured MarioKart DS and established connection to Nintendo’s WiFi service you can choose to play against a friend ,an enemy, a continental game or a worldwide game. Every experience I had was rather good. Sometimes lag occurred but it wasn’t too bad. The (free!) WiFi service extends your game a lot, the only thing that irritated me was that battle mode is excluded and some tracks are not even available…

Graphics (9/10):

MarioKart DS is a perfect example that shows what the DS can do. The graphics are in one word amazing. It looks a lot better than the Nintendo64 version of Mariokart and runs at a smooth, constant framerate. The clouds, the water, even the characters are looking very good and detailed, the game looks more like the Gamecube version, although there are still a lot of objects in 2D.?

Sound (9/10):

The music exists traditionally of happy songs and every level has it’s own music. The music in the Retro tracks is the same but the quality has been improved. The sound of objects, carts, boosts etc… is also of high quality and everything sounds like it should.Replay value(9/10):

MarioKart DS is a game that can be played over and over. You won’t get bored soon with this game sticking in your DS, waiting for you to play it! You have the singleplayer to complete, the multiplayer to play with friends and the WiFi service in which you can improve your skills and challenge unknown players from across the world.

Final conclusion:

- To every person that has a Nintendo DS I’d say buy this game if you haven’t done so.
- To every person that doesn’t have a Nintendo DS and doubts to buy one, then this game is a reason to buy a Nintendo DS.

This being said, I think MarioKart DS is THE game of 2005 for the Nintendo DS!

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